


Breathe Into Your Well

by objectlesson



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Blood, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Romance, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23660878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: “Thorin,”Bilbo gasps, digging blunt nails into the flesh of his shoulder, even as he tilts desperately into the touch. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”“I won’t,” Thorin promises. “I can be patient.I can watch,” he offers then, pupils dark and flashing from a circle of edged out ice, mouth a swollen, bitable thing. “Undress and show me, Master Baggins. What I have to look forward to when I am well.”
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 39
Kudos: 323





	Breathe Into Your Well

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha I guess I can't stop!!! I guess this is who I am now!!!! I feel crazy but also ALIVE!!! fuck you quarantine!!! watch me tattoo the lonely mountain ON MY FACE since I can't tattoo anything normal on anyone other than myself and my wife because tattoo artists cannot work right now!!! lol!!! tee hee! 
> 
> some notes on this: there's threads of possessive thorin but nothing worth tagging officially in my opinion. Mostly it's just sweet. Also it has not been edited by a beta so sorry for any mistakes! I am still in love with this pairing apparently.

—-

The room smells of grey and mildew and fever and herbs, but mostly, the endless and sticky heat of blood. 

Bilbo keeps choking on the cloying copper like it were his own insides spilling out onto the bed, his eyes hazy every time they sweep over the stony pallor of Thorin’s mud-speckled face, hair around him like a dark halo. His gaze ends up snagging over loose, parted lips, and something nameless clutches inside him like a fist around the hilt of a sword. And that’s a _feeling_ he knows now, a familiar sensation. He’s dizzy with how much he’s changed, how unrecognizable to his former self might find him. If he were not otherwise occupied by the arduous, _impossible_ task of wondering if Thorin Oakenshield may die, there could have been a flutter of pride in his chest at the realization. But instead, there is nothing but the icy tide of fear capsizing over his head, time and time again so he feels as if he’s drowning. 

“He’ll be ok…he’ll be ok, right? Óin?” He hears himself say, but his voice sounds far away, underwater. Like a creature which crawled up from the sea, not from himself, and it makes his hand rise unsteadily to his own throat, like he was feeling for something cold and slippery and scaled there. He’s not in his right mind, he realizes. Is this shock? Is it grief? Did he die back there on the ice, too, a pair of hearts ceasing to beat because they are not a pair of hearts at all, but one single organ split across two bodies? “Óin, _please,_ you must. You must tell me. He said—he said _farewell,_ and I’m not—I’m not ready for—”

Óin , who is deaf but also very good at ignoring things which may trouble him while working, grinds something furiously in a stone mortar and pestle and barks, “Balin, will you get the wee halfling out of here? I keep tripping over him.” 

Balin takes Bilbo’s shoulder in hand, and tries to steer him towards the door. “No,” he says, stumbling, heart ricocheting into his throat. “I have to stay with Thorin.” 

“Laddy. You’ve done all you can for him, and it's more than many of us could. Now, he’s in a healer’s hands. Let him be,” Ballin says gently, grip tightening. 

It sounds too much like _let him go_ , and Bilbo might crumple to his knees. He only knows the room is spinning, stone and more stone and _blood,_ so much of it. He _saw_ the blood, saw the torrents of it upon Ravenhill, staining the snow. Saw it streaming from the eagle’s talons as she lifted Thorin’s body, limp and soft. He _saw,_ but he simply—he _cannot_ live in a universe where he has lost the only person he has consciously, (and against his better judgement) _loved._ And not in the way he loved his mother, or loved a fine meal, or loved the sunlight, or even loved _The Shire._ But a different sort of love. The sort that snuck up on him and took him by the throat and shook him until he caved to its will. The sort that consumed him with fire. Made him single minded and _lost_ and so brave and reckless and _changed._ It’s too much, all of it. He inhales raggedly, and watches his tears fall to stone. 

Balin, ever patient, hauls him back up. “I’ve seen Óin do incredible things. Bring folks back from the brink of death. You let him work. It’s the best chance for Thorin to pull through.” 

And Thorin _must_ pull through, Bilbo won’t know where to house this remaining half of a heart, if he doesn’t. So, he stumbles, and lets Balin guide him away from the smell of blood. 

—-

Thorin does not die. It’s touch and go for a while, but by the time Óin emerges, looking exhausted but smiling, he’s stable. 

“Aye, you can see him,” he tells Bilbo, who had not even asked. He wonders how obvious it is, the way he feels about Thorin. If his mangled half-heart is worn outside of his body, like a brooch pinned to his tattered vest, for everyone to see. 

Thorin is pale, even in the orange glow of the firelight. Bilbo traces his profile again and again with his eyes, troubled by the smudges of dirt and ash still clinging to his face, the bits of vegetation tangled in his hair. Thorin would hate that. He always made a point to stay clean and orderly as best he could, even on the road when the rest of the company gave up on oiling their braids, or wiping the ale that clung to their beards after a heavy night of drinking and raucous storytelling. Most troubling of all, though, is the blood stained-bandage stretching from his abdomen to just below the slope of his pectoral muscles. It makes Bilbo dizzy all over again to witness, but at least, _at least_ Thorin’s bared chest so steadily rises and falls. It’s a shallow motion, but it’s there all the same and that is enough. It _has_ to be enough. 

Before Bilbo even realizes it, he’s sitting at the foot of his bed, face pressed to the wreck of sheets, inhaling with relief, with exhaustion, with _want_. He wishes these sheets smelled like Thorin, sweat and cedar and smoke, but instead there’s nothing but the medicinal bite of alcohol and herbs. At least it is not the metallic bite of blood.

Balin rests a knowing hand upon his shoulders. “It’s been a long journey, hasn’t it.” 

Bilbo nods, gasping, and then, when he can speak again, he asks in a clipped voice, “Do you think—could you perhaps bring me some soap, and water, in a dish? And. I washcloth, I suppose. For—“ and he can't even find words, for what he plans to do with these things. It seems unspeakably intimate, entirely too revealing. _I want to wipe the dirt from Thorin’s cheekbones. I want to run my fingers through his hair. I want to—I want to tell him how very sorry I am, that I had to take the stone. That I had to betray his trust. That I did not tell him I loved him, before it was perhaps too late._

Balin does not ask for further clarification, though. He nods, and sighs heavily, and disappears into the hall, leaving Bilbo and Thorin alone in the quiet. 

It’s strange, to look at him this way: sedated, silent, vulnerable. Not a king, but simply a man. Fallible and beautiful and bleeding, spread out here on a medical cot in the mountain he saved. Perhaps Thorin doesn’t even _know_ he survived yet. He seemed quite prepared to die back on Ravenhill. He’d said _farewell_. He’s said _I’m_ _sorry_. Bilbo wonders what the weight of living might feel like stacked against him, when he does wake. A kingdom to rule, a city to restore, a crown to bear. Bilbo sighs wearily, exhausted upon his behalf. _Sleep,_ he thinks. _But you must wake eventually, because I need the other half of my heart, whether or not you realize you possess it. But for now, sleep._

_—-_

Balin returns not just with soap and water, but a jar of hair oil and a wide tooth comb hewn from bone. It makes Bilbo’s stomachs drop, like he was caught crossing lines, asking too much. He averts his gaze as Balin studies him, lips pursed .“You know,” he says as he hands the tray of goods over, expression wavering somewhere between pitying and amused. “He loves you too.” 

Bilbo stutters, sloshing warm water into his own lap. His hands are shaking, his breath is stuck in his throat, burning. “I—I beg your pardon?” 

“Thorin,” Balin offers, as if it is obvious. As if it is just—something to be spoken about, dragged out into the open and picked apart like a corpse left for carrion birds. “He’s mad about you, has been since—goodness, I can’t even tell you when, it’s been that long. It’s why he gave you the Mithril. Why he trusted you over the rest of the company. Why he was able to drag himself up out of the same sickness that took his grandfather.” 

He says it all gently, like the words might rip into Bilbo were he to utter them any louder. Like Bilbo is a fragile thing, capable of being shattered. Bilbo _does_ feel shattered, so, perhaps he’s right. He can’t speak, he can only stare into the stone-grey mess of blankets bunched under the weight of Thorin’s sleeping body, and make a fist in the sponge floating in the water. “Well then,” Ballin murmurs, turning away. “I suppose I’ll leave you to it, then.” 

But before he’s out the door Bilbo finds his voice again, though it sounds choked thin as he cries, “wait!” 

Balin does, wavering in the doorway. 

And Bilbo _could_ ask so many questions. _How did you know? And are you_ certain? _Why on earth would a dwarf king ever even_ pause _to consider the affections of a hobbit? Has it ever happened before? Is there any precedent whatsoever for such things? If Thorin_ does _come out on top of this, and you_ aren’t _mistaken regarding his feelings…is there even a home for us? A place to put this strange, terrible, all-consuming love?_ He says none of those things, though, because he feels like there’s no room for such candor when Thorin lies to close, pale and silent. So he only swallows, and shakes his head before turning to Balin and whispering “Thank you. For, erm. For the soap and things.” 

Balin nods to him, and then, they are alone again. Bilbo and his shaking hands, Thorin and filth-streaked skin. And at least Bilbo can _do_ something about one of those maladies. 

—-

He can feel Thorin’s fever, even through the sponge. It’s a sickly heat, thrumming and inconsistent, and Bilbo imagines he’s smoothing it away as he cleans, banishing it to nothingness the blacker the water becomes in the bowl he holds on his lap. He thumbs experimentally up into Thorin’s hair, over the plane of his brow, across the ridges of his jaw. He's lovely, of course, even as he lies here wounded and wan with tangles in his hair. He is the loveliest thing Bilbo has ever known, and it seems truly absurd to think he could possibly return the vast sea of Bilbo’s affections, but at the same time…there’s the tug. The fishhook ran through Bilbo’s gut dragging him to and fro, the other end held in Thorin’s fist. He follows him. Even in a crowd, Bilbo was always aware of Thorin’s body in relation to his own, but as he thinks back to these moments of magnetic sway, he recalls ice blue eyes. A grounding hand splayed across the small of his back. His own name, murmured with honeyed timbre, as Thorin sought him out across a room, across a battle, across a plane of fire and blood and aching. 

Perhaps he always found Thorin because Thorin was there to _find._ Anchored to him. Hooked through his own middle, perhaps, helplessly following the same insistent tug. 

It’s a strange, thrilling thing to wonder about. To imagine isolated moments of sickening longing in a more nuanced, fractal light. To uncover hidden angles, buried corners. It makes Bilbo hot-faced and shivery to dwell on too long, so he pulls away from the sting of it, settles back onto the bed to busy himself with something methodical, and practical. Dabbing away layers of dirt, to study the shapes underneath. 

Once Thorin’s face is clean, Bilbo moves down the cords of his neck, brushing over the thready thrum of his pulse tucked away in a hollow there. He can smell Thorin’s skin as he works, the ghost of fear-sweat, pain-sweat, and then, most overwhelmingly, the menthol bitterness of the herb poultices festering under his bandages. This particular smell intensifies as Bilbo nods closer, works his way lower, from Thorin’s sternum to his chest. 

The task makes him blush, makes his mouth dry and his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth with the effort it takes to swallow his own shame. After all, he’s not motivated by something _pure,_ like fraternal obligation, or honor, or respect. He’s motivated by love. By the desire to touch Thorin’s body, to survey every inch of it and check for damage, as if he could heal him. He imagines pressing his lips to the whorled scar tissue he finds, half-obscured in the dark, thick hair on Thorin’s chest. He’s been wounded in battle before, Bilbo realizes, and he’s come out of it with nothing but a series of twisted marks, white and marbled pink. And that—that is why Bilbo is doing this. To be close, because it hurts to be anywhere else. To learn his scars, To touch them with prudent fingers, and hope the wound in his side will soon be another tale of battle to count amongst his already existing collection. 

Once he’s tenderly wiped down all the skin he can reach, he coats his fingers in the hair oil, its shine sap-gold on his skin before he combs it carefully through Thorin’s hair, starting at the ends before working his way towards the roots, untangling as he goes. He worries snarls to strands. He sifts through to the heat of his scalp. He smoothes, and plaits, and it is not until he’s finished and there’s nothing left to do, that he realizes the tug is still _there._

Powerful. Unrelenting. He has no reason to remain here by Thorin’s side, but he _knows_ he cannot leave. This is where half of his heart resides, so he must, too. 

So Bilbo inhales a deep, rattling breath, and curls up beside Thorin in the bed, cheek pressed to the clean stretch of his bandage where it wraps around his ribcage, white like snow. And there, Fingers still shining with oil and a pan of dirty water at his feet, he sleeps. 

—-

After several days, Óin tells Bilbo he simply _cannot_ be in Thorin’s bed all the time. He doesn't give him a good reason for it, really, he just puts his foot down and shoos him off halfway through changing Thorin’s bandage.

“At least— _please,_ at least let me have a cot in the room. By the fire, so I can watch him in the night. Make sure nothing happens,” Bilbo argues when Óin won’t let him back inside, blockading the door, expression stern. 

“Nothing will _happen_ to him at night,” Óin argues, arms crossed over his chest. “Especially without filthy halflings putting their filthy hands all over his perfectly clean bandages.” 

“I—I didn’t—my hands are _not_ filthy!” Bilbo sputters, and then Óin ’s eyes widen, like he’s caught him. 

“See! I knew it. You can’t keep your hands to yourself and as long as that wound is still open to infection, it’s best you keep your distance,” he snaps, narrowing his eyes, pointing with a single, stubby finger. Bilbo must look particularly desperate, though, because as he storms down the hallway he shouts too loud over his shoulder, “I’ll look into getting that cot for you.” 

And sure enough, several hours later, when Bilbo retires after an afternoon of nervous wandering and general overthinking, edging into panic, he finds there’s a heap of blankets and skins on a narrow cot wedged between Thorin’s sickbed and the fireplace. 

He drags it a bit closer to the bed and lies down gingerly, thinking that perhaps his _is_ more comfortable and practical than wedging himself into the few inches of space beside Thorin’s solid, unmoving frame. He settles in, gaze flicking up to the bed. Thorin has been stirring lately. Not sitting up or speaking in complete sentences, perhaps, but blinking hazily, fumbling, murmuring nonsense from the thick of his fever. And it’s not _ideal,_ and it’s not the picture of solid recovery, perhaps, but it’s something. And Bilbo hopes it is the beginning of something better. 

His eyes are heavy and his head throbs, just as it has every night since he was knocked unconscious on Ravenhill. He ignores the impulse to scratch the newly tight, itchy scabs at his brow and instead reaches up to touch Thorin’s thick forearm. He often does this when he lies beside him. Seeks out a pulse to press his fingers to, to count idly until he tumbles into unsettled dreams. But this time the angle is different, so he’s resigned to stroking the outside plane, from elbow to wrist. 

Bilbo moves the thick black hair against the grain, watching the shine of it in the fire, throat thick. _You must wake up,_ he tells Thorin, as he shifts the scarred skin of his knuckles over the bones, gaze softening with unshed tears, the wet making the orange flicker of the room into something distorted. Shadows bounce off of stone, and he laces their fingers, squeezing helplessly. _You must. I have so many things to tell you._

_—-_

Perhaps it is a prayer, and perhaps someone hears it. For that very night, Bilbo is interrupted from his usual parade of nightmares by muffled, frantic voices. 

Every night, his dreams are the same: goblins sifting in from every corner like insects, too many to count, to fathom. And always his sword is at his hip, glowing blue, but he cannot _move_ it. He cannot lift his arms to swing, or his legs to run. He’s cemented in place, paralyzed as the company fights in a blur around him. Thorin at the center, hair swinging and heavy, clotted with blood. 

Sometimes, he stands immobile as he watches all his friends die. Other times, he’s suddenly cloaked in the strange, muted, smudge-sick world of the ring. No one can see him, no one can hear him, and perhaps, he can fade into darkness here, and escape having to witness his failures. But always, before the black consumes him like a sweet, enduring sleep, there’s a flash or orange, a narrowed pupil, the smell of dragon-charred earth and most peculiarly, the sensation of being watched. Something terrible and enormous and ever-present, boring down on him, incinerating him to ash before he wakes, gasping. 

But this time, before anything terrible happens in his dream, he hears his name in Thorin’s voice. _Bilbo,_ he says, and it’s raw with the weight of an apology in it. _I’m so sorry_ it says. _I wish to part from you in friendship._ Bilbo blinks, mouth dry, heart pounding. _No!_ he thinks as he untangles himself, lost, desperate, terrified. _You cannot part from me at all. You lived. You lived, and you’re here, and I love you, and when you wake from your fever I will_ tell _you._ I will—

“Bilbo,” Thorin says, a clear and lucid rumble from the bed. “Please. Balin, bring him to me.” 

“He’s right _here,_ you sit back down, you fool. You’re still healing.” 

“He hasn’t left your side in _days._ He’s made my job a right nuisance,” Óin snaps, and— _oh,_ Thorin. Thorin’s awake. He’s woken up and he’s asking for Bilbo and the fire is too hot and the distance between the cot and the bed is too much but still, Bilbo trips across the room and staggers to him, throwing himself to the side of the bed, pushing Ballin and Óin aside in the process. It appears that they’re holding Thorin down, they’re tending to his wounds, they’re— _something,_ Bilbo doesn’t know, because he doesn’t care, because _there._ In fire-lit semi-darkness is Thorin’s pale blue gaze, the dark curls of his hair falling like spilled oil across his pale shoulders, the line of his jaw like the cut of a gemstone and all Bilbo can _think_ about is how it might feel under his mouth: to kiss that angle, to scour his lips raw on the shorn scrub of his beard. 

“Thorin,” he murmurs, voice ragged with sleep, with disbelief, with wonder. He doesn’t know how to touch him but he also doesn’t know how _not_ to touch him, so he fails to stop himself. He palms from his chest to his throat where his pulse thunders, the strength of it enough to make him _sob_ in relief, the sound of it nothing but a wordless, frayed gasp ripped from his lips. “You’re awake. On—On the mountain, I thought—I was so sure—”

“Bilbo, forgive me,” Thorin says automatically, voice hoarse from having not been used in days. He cups Bilbo’s face between two broad, sure palms and drags him closer, so he trips and has to brace his weight with a knee on the bed, pressed flush to Thorin’s hip, which is _warm,_ but not fever-warm. Warm like the sun, like freshly baked bread, like a cup of tea. Alive and glorious and profoundly comforting. “Please, forgive me. I meant nothing of what I said to you, I—I was _so_ blind.” 

“Stop, _stop,_ I’m not angry, you absolute idiot,” Bilbo hisses, drifting closer so their brows press and anchor. He’s distantly aware of Óin and Ballin somewhere indistinct behind him, the way they’re murmuring, exchanging looks, skirting along the edges of his vision. He cannot _care,_ though, not with Thorin under him, eye bright, lips licked and parted and close enough to kiss. “You already said all this when you were _bleeding out_ Ravenhill, don’t you remember? You nearly scared me half to death alongside you. You nearly _left_ me. And…It’s mad, butI’ve forgiven you one hundred times over for everything else, but I didn’t think—I wouldn’t be able to forgive you for leaving me. So thank you, for coming back.” 

He’s not even sure Thorin is listening to him. There’s a lost, awe-stricken look to his eyes as he thumbs over Bilbo’s cheeks, the bags under his eyes, then up to his hairline, his touch tender, lingering, sweet. “I love you,” he says then, voice nothing but a low, wavering scrape that sinks low and stone-heavy into Bilbo’s gut, barbs him, imbeds deep enough to draw blood. And this confession—It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Balin already _told_ him, after all, but it’s an entirely different beast, coming from Thorin himself. It makes Bilbo tremble, his cheeks burn, his body surge helplessly and reflexively closer at the terrible sincerity of it. “I have done nothing but love you since you joined this company. I’m sorry.” 

Bilbo feels like he’s falling, like he’s tipped off a precipice, leaving him to tumble into Thorin’s arms. In seconds he’s on top of the bed, he’s sucking in Thorin’s exhalations, he’s trembling as he murmurs, “Stop— _please_ stop apologizing.” 

And then, as if they could sense an oncoming storm, Balin and Óin are backing away, excusing themselves clumsily out the door upon securing Thorin’s bandage in a hasty, slapdash manner. Bilbo had almost forgotten they were there at all, but the air in the room changes once they're _truly_ gone, Thorin’s grip wavering with barely restrained hunger, and immediately everything feels real, and urgent, and _grave_. Bilbo purses his lips and swallows nervously, inhaling to speak before he loses his nerve.

“I love you, too,” he confesses, stomach plummeting at the way the words make Thorin’s gaze soften, his eyes slide shut. “I couldn’t _bear_ the thought of living in a world without you and I won’t stand pretending for a second longer I don’t want to—oh. _So_ many things. To kiss you. To be yours.” His words stumble out, tumbling over each other clumsily but it doesn’t matter, because Thorin is clutching him tight, and hanging on every single one, like a star suspended in the night. “So, I _am_ yours, Thorin, I suppose. If you want me. If you’d like—“ 

Thorin groans, and pulls Bilbo in with a fist in the collar of his shirt. 

It’s heat and blunt impact before it’s a kiss. Bilbo sways and shudders, overwhelmed by the scrape of Thorin’s beard, the certain pressure of his hands, the warmth of his skin bleeding through the blanket and searing him. They surge for a moment, grappling before Bilbo opens his mouth and Thorin licks fiercely inside and so suddenly everything slots together, molten and perfect _._ It’s fire and it's slick and it's one hundred shameful, feverish dreams Bilbo had before this moment, but hotter and sweeter than any of them, because it’s _real_. Bilbo kisses Thorin again and again, deep and wet and breathless because this is better than breathing. This is all there is. 

He knows he should stop to check on Thorin’s bandage, or perhaps so they can _talk_ about what they’re doing, but he’s also superstitiously terrified that the reality will shatter if he pauses to breathe. So instead he drowns, and tastes, and lets Thorin pull him close and crushing with his hands all over his back. 

Thorin does not seem interested in slowing down. He keeps groaning into Bilbo’s lips, giving him sounds to swallow, fucking his tongue into his mouth, every motion and drag so astoundingly soft and _giving_ it feels like a revelation. It’s only when he pushes a hand up under the back of his shirt to touch skin that Bilbo finally breaks away gasping, eyes fixed on the way Thorin’s mouth has been reduced to a dark, swollen shape in the night. Bilbo thumbs over it without thinking, pushing into the slickness as he arches his spine, fitting himself into the broad, hungry span of Thorin’s palms. “If I were not still injured, I’d spend the whole night—every moment of it—mapping you out in kisses. Tasting every inch of you,” Thorin groans against Bilbo’s searching fingers. “I cannot believe that you want this. That you’re _real._ ” 

“ _Oh,”_ Bilbo murmurs, cheeks burning. “Definitely real. And, well. I’d like that—everything you said—very much,” he confesses, smoothing his own palms up Thorin’s throat in wonder, cupping his pulse like something fragile. “If you were not still injured.” 

Thorin’s hands drop away reluctantly, fist in the blankets at his sides. “I’m twisting at my wound when I use my arm,” he grits out. “I can feel it. Terrible, unfair fucking thing.” 

The mere _thought_ of Thorin risking further inquiry to touch Bilbo makes him dizzy, overwhelmed. “Well, _don’t._ Don’t use your arms then, _please._ I’d never forgive myself—or you, for that matter, if you prolonged your recovery on my account.” 

“It’s worth it,” Thorin murmurs. “Every second is worth it.” 

“Not to _me,_ I’d like to do this—to have you more than once, if I have a say in it,” Bilbo explains reluctantly, chewing at his lips. “So. I’m afraid this will have to wait.” 

Thorin growls wordlessly, pressing his face into Bilbo’s hair and inhaling, reaching for him again and sliding his hands lower to cup his ass and squeeze experimentally, and then _possessively._ It’s dizzying, and Bilbo’s not certain he’ll survive this without— _something._ He’s achingly hard in his trousers, sick with longing but—but he must— “Thorin, _stop_. Fucking. Fuck.” 

“Ah,” Thorin hisses, letting go, squirming on the bed, chest heaving with restraint. “But I want you,” he chokes out in a fierce rumble. “I need you.” 

“I— _fuck,_ so do I. Just. What can we get away with?” Bilbo begs, sifting his fingers through Thorin’s hair, curling it around his fist and tugging desperately, heart racing so much he feels unsteady with mindless want. “What can I do to you?” 

Thorin curses, eyes fluttering closed briefly before flashing open, the palest sapphire. Bilbo has never dared witness the color so up _close,_ and it’s even lovelier at this distance, crystal clear but still so _warm,_ glowing blue like the hottest flame. “You need not do anything to me,” Thorin breathes, brushing knuckles over the topography of Bilbo’s face, smile a soft, wavering thing. “Let me—Just let me touch you,” he murmurs, pulling him closer, fingers digging into the flesh of Bilbo’s sides until the strain makes him wince in pain, before his grip slackens. “ _Fuck,”_ he says then, the single syllable of it rough and thick, tugging so impossibly low in Bilbo’s gut . “I want you impossibly close,” Thorin murmurs. “On top of me. _Inside_ of me.”

Bilbo sharply inhales, shaking his head in vast overwhelm. “Right. Ok. We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he gasps as Thorin rucks open the neck of his shirt, mouthing down the exposed skin he can reach without straining, eliciting shiver after shiver. “ _Thorin,”_ Bilbo gasps, digging blunt nails into the flesh of his shoulder, even as he tilts desperately into the touch. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” 

“I won’t,” Thorin promises. “I can be patient.I can watch,” he offers then, pupils dark and flashing from a circle of edged out ice, mouth a swollen, bitable thing. “Undress and show me, Master Baggins. What I have to look forward to when I am well.” 

“But I’m not—I’m not very much to _look_ at,” Bilbo admits, reflexively withering at the idea of Thorin’s impossible, hungry gaze raking over him, boring into his flesh. His stomach twists up at the notion of being scrutinized, but he’s _so_ hard it’s difficult to think, to come up with an alternative. 

Thorin shakes his head, brushes his fingers down the outside of Bilbo’s arm with a slow, lingering reverence. “You are heaven to look at. I do nothing but look at you. When I close my eyes, you're still there,” he murmurs, settling back into his blankets and making a suggestive fist in the waistband of Bilbo’s trousers. “Please. Let me see you.” 

Bilbo flickers in uncertainty for a moment, but eventually arousal wins out over his insecurity because _Thorin_ wants it, and Bilbo is compelled to give Thorin everything he desires. So, he ducks out of his braces, one shoulder followed by another until they pool around his waist, and then he begins to unbutton his shirt with tremulous fingers. He does it slowly, not to tease (it seems absurd to even imagine he possesses the power to _do_ such a thing) but because he’s _nervous_ , because it’s _mortifying,_ because he can hardly make his hands work, eyes darting and locked on his own shell buttons, so that he does not have to witness Thorin witnessing him. 

It hardly matters because he can _feel_ Thorin watching, he can hear the filthy _snick_ sound as he licks his lips. “Please,” Thorin murmurs, reaching out to gently touch Bilbo’s knee. “Look at me.” 

Bilbo’s gaze flicks up reflexively, and instantly his stomach plummets at the way Thorin is regarding him. With eyes like fire, openly hungry, raw and bleeding lymph like the skin beneath a torn scab. And Thorin—no one should _look_ like that, especially not injured, especially not reclined on a sickbed, bandaged and pale. He is so stunningly handsome it floods Bilbo’s mouth. “I’ve dreamed of this,” he says, voice low and hot and snagging. “Having you in my bed. Watching you undress.” 

“In your dreams, was I so woefully _, painstakingly_ awful at it?” Bilbo asks as he shoulders out of his shirt, letting it slither to a pile beside the bed. “I swear to you, I take my shirt off every evening and I’ve never been quite so dreadful at the task. You—erm. I’m afraid my hands are shaking.” 

“I wish I could do it for you,” Thorin murmurs, voice wet and dark like clouds in an oncoming storm. Then he murmurs something indecipherable in _Khuzdul_ , and Bilbo’s stomach swoops imagining the possibilities. “You’re beautiful,” Thorin adds, shaking his head slowly, mouth wet. “Now, the rest. Please _,_ let me see everything.” 

Bilbo grows very quiet as he does as he’s told, unbuttoning and shucking his trousers clumsily, gut in knots, heart in his throat. He’s terribly hard and dripping with want, palming himself nervously as Thorin’s gaze crawls over him: down his flushed chest to his soft stomach, over the plump, hairless curves of his thighs, to the thatch of red-brown between them. Every sweep feels like a forest fire laying waste to charred earth, and Bilbo can hardly breathe with how much he wants Thorin, but also, how good it feels to be _wanted_ in return. “You should know,” he mumbles, stroking himself, well aware of the way Thorin’s gaze is locked on the tilt of his wrist, tracking the steady motion. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve done anything like this. I’m perhaps—well. I may be rusty. I apologize.” 

“Good,” Thorin breathes, kneading up Bilbo’s thigh as he tilts closer, emboldened by the way he can _hear_ Thorin’s wanting, labored breath, _feel_ the heat coming off him in waves. “You’re mine, then. You’ll forget everyone else who’s ever touched you.” It comes out rough and delicious and Bilbo _whimpers_ at the implication, but then Thorin’s gaze softens, his fingers unclenching to smooth sweetly over Bilbo’s skin almost as if in apology. “What I mean,” he mumbles, “is that it’s been a very long time for me, too. And I’d like to start over with you.” 

“Fine, yes, good,” Bilbo gasps, clambering onto knees beside Thorin to touch himself, hand moving with graceless, desperate fervor. He’s never wondered he might look like doing this, but it makes him shivery and hot all over to be watched, the heat of Thorin’s gaze burning him up in its wake. “I—just— tell me what to do. How to please you, what you want…to see, I suppose. Tell me how to touch myself how _you’d_ touch _yourself_.” 

“No,” Thorin groans, throat rippling like a snow-capped mountain skyline as he swallows. “Not how I’d touch myself. How I’d touch _you,_ if I could touch you. _”_

 _“Fuck,_ ok, that’s. Hm. That’s—how? How would you touch me?” Bilbo asks, voice climbing pitch at an alarming speed, rhythm faltering, hand very nearly falling away under the fierce scrutiny of Thorin’s gaze. “Tell me how.” 

“Slow down,” Thorin starts with after a long, wrecked breath. “Take your hand away, so I can see you for a moment.” Bilbo does, cheeks burning, and Thorin makes a wordless sound deep in his throat. “I’d tease you,” he manages to choke out. “I’d touch you so light, so slow. Until you were begging. Until you could remember nothing but my name,” he murmurs. “I’d take my time with you.” 

Bilbo clenches his jaw, and ever so gently strokes up and down his shaft as instructed. It feels ridiculous, and almost painful, and also _unbearably_ hot, because it is an order. Because he can imagine his own hand is Thorin’s “Like this?” he breathes. 

“Yes, but— _oh._ At the tip, where you’re wet. Spread it around,” Thorin chokes out. “Fuck, _Bilbo.”_

 _“_ Oh, _oh,”_ he chokes out, messily dabbing his finger into the fluid beading at his slit. “You make me so—you—“ 

“Say it,” Thorin begs, shifting his hips restlessly, then wincing at the ensuing pain before he stills. “Tell me.” 

“You make me—you feel so _good,”_ Bilbo grinds out, stomach rolling in shame, in _want. “_ You’re going to make me come, without even touching me.” 

Thorin groans, gritting his teeth. “ _Yes._ Make a fist around it. Don’t just touch yourself, _pleasure_ yourself, as I would. As I— _fuck,_ Bilbo, come here, kiss me, give me your mouth,” he demands then, and as they crash together, everything that follows, follows so _fast_. Bilbo pitches forward, weight supported one hand as he brings himself off in hot, pulsing ribbons with the other, gasping helplessly against Thorin’s slack lips, his open, hungry mouth. “Yes, please, give it to me,” he murmurs into their kiss, and then, as Bilbo rips away to breathe, his gaze flickers, blown as wide and black as the whole night. “Feed it to me,” he prays, working a hand between them so he can grip Bilbo’s wrist, even if it hurts him, even if it rips the wound open wider beneath the pressure of the bandage. “Please.” 

Bilbo doesn't even fully register the command through the haze of his orgasm, at first. There’s static and waves and waves of sensation, his hips pumping, his breath punched out of him in whines, in whimpers. But most importantly, there’s Thorin. His broad chest hot and solid under Bilbo’s cheek, heart pounding beneath the gasping spread of his lips. There’s the heat of him, the certainty of him, the smell of his sweat. “Please,” Thorin repeats, voice almost a sob, and as the mess of feeling clears, Bilbo comprehends it in full and obeys, gathering the sticky burn of his come onto his own fingers to raise them wearily. 

“Here,” he murmurs, pushing into Thorin’s mouth past the second knuckle, so his palm brushes the jut of his chin. Thorin groans, he sucks, his tongue swirls in dirty, yearning circles and it’s easily the most vile, base, _filthy_ thing Bilbo has ever done, but _still,_ it feels holy, because he is in love. That simple fact seems to change everything, as it lies alongside the flicker of the fire, and the faint ghost of blood. “Thorin,” he says, just to hear it. Two simple syllables, but a universe of meaning, and devotion, and pain.

Eventually he stops sucking and releases Bilbo, allows his hand to fall to his chest in a slick of saliva. “Thank you,” he murmurs, curling an arm around his waist gingerly, pulling him close. “I love you,” he says then, a crack running through the last word, heavy with tears, raw with feeling. “I love you so much it could kill me.” 

“Well, don’t let it _kill you,_ there are plenty of other things trying to do that, I’d prefer if loving me was more. Preservative,” Bilbo mumbles, voice hoarse, lips raw as he parts them over Thorin’s collarbone. “Though I’ll admit, that was a rather admirable effort.” 

“It was agonizing,” Thorin mumbles into Bilbo’s hair, pulling him close. “Torture, to not touch you.” 

Bilbo sweeps his hand down Thorin’s pectorals, brushing through the sweat between them, clinging to dark hair. And then, very carefully, he feels around the edges of his bandage. “You’re alright? We didn't break anything?” 

Thorin rumbles wordlessly for a moment, and then he sighs, “I believe I will survive, Master Baggins.” 

Bilbo smiles against skin and continues to touch experimentally, palm light as he traces the place he imagines Thorin’s wound to be before sweeping back up to his bare chest, then, with his breath caught in his throat, lower. Thorin goes still. “I told you, it’s not necessary—you don’t need to touch me. To bring you pleasure is enough.” 

“I _want_ to touch you,” Bilbo explains in a hush, biting the inside of his cheek fiercely to force back a whimper as he curiously brushes his fingers up the shape of Thorin's cock, their skin separated by layers of clothing and blanket. Still, even so, he can tell it’s big, and hot, and _hard,_ yearning up against the pressure of his palm as Thorin’s inhalation wavers. “Do you think I _don’t_ dream of the same things you do? That I haven't imagined seeing you…touching you? Because I certainly have.” 

Thorin stirs. “I won’t be able to lie still,” he says then, cock twitching in Bilbo’s palm as he fits his fingers around it, astounded by the girth, mouth watering as he imagines the ring of his lips being stretched with it, his throat choked full. The truth is that he _hasn’t_ let himself indulge in the filthy things he desires very frequently, and certainly not since his more carefree youth. Before this adventure, he managed to successfully convince himself it wasn't something he needed. That he could live without fulfilling his desires. But _now,_ none of that matters. Thorin is his, and he _wants_ him, and his mouth is watering just to _imagine_ it. 

“I think you will,” he murmurs, sitting up, shifting his way down the bed, eyes locked on the way Thorin is tenting the blankets to obviously, so _deliciously. “_ I can hold your hands down at your sides. Just use my mouth. I’ve been told I’m rather clever in moments of dire circumstance…perhaps you’ve noticed.” 

“I’ve noticed,” Thorin says, parting his thighs minimally as Bilbo settles beside him, eyes flashing. “You must know I’m powerless against you,” he murmurs then, gaze darkening, something like adoration staining the blue, softening it. “So whatever you desire, it is yours. Heart, soul, body. All of me belongs to you.” His voice whittles into a strangled hiss as Bilbo reaches beneath the blankets to touch him unobstructed. 

The heat is stomach-wrenching, and Bilbo gasps at the mere _feel_ of it: soft skin pulled tight over steel-hardness, a dirty shift, the sticky patina of sweat. Thorin’s shaft flexes in his palm, and Bilbo can hardly breathe with how _moved_ he is by something so simple, so base. “I do this to you?” he marvels, pushing his fingers up through the beading fluid at the slit. 

“Yes,” Thorin hisses through his teeth. “You ruin me. You break my heart.” 

“No,” Bilbo says, tightening his grip, lengthening his strokes. “I don’t break it, I’m—I’m the other half if it. I complete it. Your heart, that is. Your heart.” And then, he has nothing else to say that won’t end in a sudden deluge or raw, ugly tears, so he tugs the blankets down to otherwise occupy his mouth. 

Immediately Thorin reaches for him, fisting into the back of his hair, crying out. Bilbo reaches clumsily for his wrist and pins it to the bed, sinking lower, eyes watering, salt on his tongue. He can smell Thorin all around him. Not blood, or medicine, or fever this time, but overwhelming musk. Spice and salt and skin and truth, and it makes him drool as he swallows the thickness deeper. 

Thorin’s cock hits the back of Bilbo’s throat far before the whole thing is inside of his mouth, so he takes the base in hand to cover what he cannot fit. It’s a self indulgent thing to do, motivated by the powerful desire to touch, and feel, to _taste_ all he possibly can so that it feels like he’s drowning. But it must _also_ feel good because Thorin groans, hips rolling, length pulsing as Bilbo greedily sucks. 

His neck aches and he can hardly breathe and he keeps gagging, but all the same, he feels like he could do this forever. That he’s meant to lie between the power of Thorin Oakenshield’s thighs: voice silenced, lips spread, face spit-wet. Bilbo closes his eyes and moans around his full mouth, feeling like he’s come home, like he’s fulfilled his best and most certain destiny. And here, he loses time. It becomes maddeningly hot and delectably slow, so he does whatever he _wants_ to do. Whatever he's denied himself in favor of loneliness, because somehow loneliness felt easier, and _safer_ than sharing a heart. But not anymore. He’s sick of choosing safety. 

Bilbo never finds a building rhythm, instead he just takes, indulges, _pleases_ himself as Thorin told him to only moments before. He licks, and fills his mouth, and _sucks_ , learning the flavor, the weight of Thorin’s cock on his tongue, the suffocating way it fills his mouth if he slides all the way down. He rubs his cheek against it, he inhales from the dark, musky curls, he cups the heavy weight of Thorin’s balls and rolls them in his palm, everything so much _bigger_ and _heavier_ and _better_ than he imagined when he allowed himself the terror of imagining such things. Thorin fists in the sheets and murmurs encouragement through the whole of it, but Bilbo can hardly hear him, for his own blood is rushing in his ears, enough to drown out the crackle of the fire, the heave of their breath. 

Bilbo nearly forgets the end goal of such a task is to bring Thorin off, so when it _does_ happen,it catches him by surprise. There’s a tensing, a gathering. A strangled groan and then Thorin attempting to touch Bilbo’s hair again. Bilbo holds him down, thinks about pulling off in a froth of spit to scold but instead, suddenly, he’s being _choked._ It’s hot and bitter and there’s so _much_ of it he can’t swallow it all down even after the first reflex, so instead he gives up to sputter and touches Thorin through the aftershocks instead, gasping, letting the last pulsing white ribbons fall on his own cheek like a baptismal. 

When it’s all over Thorin laughs breathlessly, twisting his wrist in Bilbo’s still fierce grip. “I am supposed to believe you’re _rusty?”_ he asks, using his free hand to very carefully reach between his legs and touch Bilbo’s come-sticky cheek, sweet and reverent. “A burglar _and_ a liar.” 

“Neither,” Bilbo murmurs, using the blanket to wipe himself off as he prudently sits, trying his hardest not to jostle Thorin as he climbs up and fits himself to his uninjured side. “Merely a quick learner and a a hobbit. As you might recall, we are terribly fond of creature comforts and very good food and other—“ he pauses to kiss Thorin, because the way he’s looking at him makes it truly impossible _not_ to—“ _pleasurable_ things.” 

“Well, then. I am lucky you find such acts pleasurable. I would be honored to be counted among your comforts,” Thorin mumbles, wincing as he arranges himself before settling down with a sigh, one arm tucked possessively around Bilbo’s body. 

“You have become my chief comfort,” Bilbo admits after several moments. His breath is slowing, his eyes are growing heavy, and perhaps that is why he finds it so much easier to let the truth fall from his lips. “It’s quite troubling, actually. I—when I think of Bag End, now, it’s not the same as it once was. I miss it, still, of _course_ I do but…I simply cannot long for a place where _you’re_ not. It doesn't feel like home, so much as this—here,” he explains, reaching up to cup Thorin’s jaw. “Feels like home.” 

Thorin is very quiet, brushing back and forth over Bilbo’s lower back so soothingly Bilbo thinks he could nod off, if they were not in the middle of a conversation. “I feel somewhat similarly about Erebor,” he says after a while. “For years, it’s all I’ve thought of. Having a home, returning somewhere familiar, somewhere truly—mine. But if you are not in these halls, they are only familiar. They are not mine. Not so much as you are,” he rumbles. Then, after a long, tremulous breath, he adds, “I was prepared to die on Ravenhill. And it was almost a relief, to be freed from feeling split in two.” 

“Perhaps we don’t have to split the other. Perhaps we could—”

“Bilbo. I would not ask you to stay with me, just as you would not ask me to go with you,” Thorin says, voice soft, ripped to tatters. “But. If you could not stay— _I_ could not either. And I am willing to consider other options.” 

“Hush,” Bilbo interrupts, covering Thorin’s mouth with his palm. “This is the sort of thing we talk about in the morning. After breakfast. I cannot possibly be expected to discuss travel arrangements, yours _or_ mine, on an empty stomach.” 

Thorin softens against him, exhalation warm and sweet against his brow. “Fine, then. Have if your way, Halfling. We shall leave the difficult questions to the daylight.” 

And Bilbo smiles, letting his hand fall heavily, fingers spreading over the place where the other half of his heart beats, steady like waves against a shore, driven home by the moon. 


End file.
